Silently cooling a Radeon 8500/9100

kork · Post by **kork** » Mon Mar 17, 2003 4:21 am

I recently purchased a Radeon 9100 based graphics card. The card came with ATI's own (branded?) fan, the noise of which is now slowly but surely driving me insane. It is by far the biggest single source of noise in my computer, and I would very much like to get rid of it. I had a look at the Zalman ZM80A-HP, but unfortunately my card lacks the mounting holes required for its installation. The Zalman piece also seems quite expensive where I live.

Is it possible to cool the Radeon chipset by e.g. slapping some general small-ish heatsink on it and pointing some undervolted silent fan at it? Alternatively, are there other heatsinks capable of keeping my card cool without active cooling? IIRC, someone on either this or Anandtech's forum mentioned using her or his Radeon 8500 without even a heatsink, like you can do with a 9000; can anyone tell me if this is safe to do? I can't seem to find that post right now, but I'm quite sure it's around somewhere.

Thanks in advance.

pingu666 · Post by **pingu666** » Mon Mar 17, 2003 3:12 pm

try the old zalman gfx cooler
cu 17 i think

rpc180 · Post by **rpc180** » Mon Mar 17, 2003 9:25 pm

I read that post on the fanless 8500 too. I've got a version that has mounting holes, and I'm using the 80A. WIthout a fan, the heatsinks are warm (not overly hot), but the card's PCB is really warm where the memory is ... I think the fan might play some role in indirectly cooling the nearby PCB to tolerable temps. I put a 5V panaflo next to teh card to cool the PCB, but it also cools the heatsink as well. I believe that the card will work with small heatsinks and a larger undervolted fan wtihout a problem, the 80a with a fan is overkill, while the 80a without a fan is definately warm, in the same way, a smaller heatsink with a fan will be fine, but definately don't just use a small heatsink wtihout a fan.

Bluefront · Post by **Bluefront** » Tue Mar 18, 2003 3:01 am

You could try this....I'm using it on a AIW7500 with just a heatsink. Home-made duct attached to a slot fan, covered with compusa acoustic foam. Cuts the noise down quite a bit. Fan running on about 1/2 speed....

http://photos.yahoo.com/bc/bluefront100 ... yahoo.com/

pingu666 · Post by **pingu666** » Wed Mar 19, 2003 4:18 am

hehe bluefront:)
my ram gets toasty
hm must dl rage3d tweak or sumin to underclock
coolermaster make cheap ill ramsinks with frag tape
they should be ok for all the ram
my old tweakmonster ones arent
*finds pics*

pingu666 · Post by **pingu666** » Wed Mar 19, 2003 4:20 am

http://www.emotiveexcellence.com//pingu ... age_01.htm
there we go
thats a old tweakmonster style mem heatsink

ez2remember · Post by **ez2remember** » Wed Mar 19, 2003 6:31 am

This is what I did with a Radeon AIW 8500:

Removed the ATI fan, left the stock HS on and glued Panaflo@5v to a Zalman bracket, so it is parrallel with the graphics card. Been running it for 2 months without any problems at all. The 40mm ATI fan only blows a tiny amount of air, the Panaflo @5v pretty much provides sufficient air with much less noise. If you want to be safe you could always run it at 7v which is still pretty quiet.